And Then There Were Three
by Youkomon
Summary: Chronologically, things happen and people suffer. People suffer and reach new conclusions about themselves. Oban is no exception. [And Eva, Aikka and Jordon are already prying apart their own thoughts.]


In which there are three snapshots within the lives of three different Oban characters. Each snapshot takes place at a various time in the Oban cycle and this should be reasonably easy to indentify. All snapshots are placed in chronological order regarding this timeframe.

And now that the boring and slightly robotic explantation has been cleared, please feel free to read and hopefully comment.

N/B This site sucks at how it lets you format your work. It won't even let me put paragraph breaks where I want them. I remember when it used to be easy...like years back. --;

* * *

Eva remembers the day she realised what the word 'father' meant to her. It was the day when she'd pressed her small face against the iron-chipped bars of the school gates and stared out at the green foliage that yawned outwards into an impossible space. And there had been a girl, no taller than she was, eyes big and black against the window pane of a car as she starched past her vision in a flash of speed. Just a little girl who injected stinging words from out of the open window. 

"Mummy, there's a beggar girl out there!"

She had been stuck to the gates then, hands rattling feebly at the metallic sticks as they rose imposingly above her. And she had looked up and felt the sky fall into her eyes.  
'Father' was somewhere other than here. 'Father' never went far without 'Mother'. And together they were 'Family.'

Eva trembled again, this time in the sheet that were encrusting with the dust of Oban. She had certainly reached a somewhere-other-than-there and finally conquered that damn gate. But 'Father' had elicited to travel forwards and lose meaning.

And that's precisely the reason why she keeps her eyes fixed on the race track in front of her.

* * *

It was funny. Funny how all the jewels could stain his hair and make him look bedraggled and humble in his royal coat of blue and white at summer festivals. Funny how brave words from his mother could make him feel hope flutter within his racing head, yet make his heart swell up with cold, furious anger. 

It wasn't so funny when he saw the unshed tears in her eyes when she implored him to try, try his hardest out there in the unseen universe and almost win. Almost win and let those glaring yellow eyes and hulking mass of black claim their freedom and win, _win_, win. Even she had never truly stood there and expected him to win.

So wasn't it strange, yes quite strange that it was a young human girl with curled, unadorned hair who thought he could win. Who demanded that he try his best, not for his planet but for his chance to prove himself as a pilot, prove himself worthy of her friendship. Of her.

Because it was always about her. He hadn't quite figured it out yet but there was something in the way she held herself, a brief spark of something serious in her pitifully weak bones when she yelled at him about her selfish honour. He despised selfishness. But she still raced, for herself, he could see that, always racing for some reason she tucked away from him and the Crogs, a reason he wasn't sure he was ready for.

She was a large package to deal with, angst, tears, a curious sense of honour that seemed to come and go on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and a bright flame of pained anger that he had once seen clenched in his father's brow when a Crog's claw chipped at the pulsing neck of his mother. And it didn't scare him exactly. It made him curious, no, fascinated. _She_ was like a miniature Crog who would spit and bite with paleness unsuited to her demurer, a little Crog he could divide in two with just a few harsh words.

Oh, not to feel helpless for once, it was _amazing_. Rather like this angry little human girl he had grown so attached to so rapidly. How could such a little body be filled with so many huge emotions?  
She knew how to keep him on his toes. Or to be more precise, how to lock them on G'dar. If he let himself slid off his beetle's back for one second…she would win. Instead of the Crogs. And perhaps, instead of him. She was good at this racing, getting better, and her talent was starting to branch out in ways he couldn't imitate. Which was really quite embarrassing, given her limited agility and inability to even do a simple feat like multiple cartwheels; he had been doing them since he was six.

But he was not six anymore, this girl was making that evident. She was proving it by not liking the same flowers the noble's daughters had at court and flat-out refusing to be carried away into a romantic fantasy like all the other pretty girls did. Not that she was pretty…he could smell the motor oil in her hair and the tattoos on her cheeks screamed 'defiance' and 'freedom' at him…he loved the abstract concepts they represented but like his father would point out, a rebel could never submit to royalty.

Human were rebels. They didn't like Crog authority (though he could back them on that), they didn't always play by the rules and they didn't seem to realise quite when the right time was for them to sew their tongues up and out of sight. But despite this, they could detect skill, admire talent to the point of jealously and be stubbornly brave in the face of overwhelming odds and more. He had seen all this rushing and sliding onto her face, conflicts and scares, blushes and ferocity, tenderness and scorn, until he just wanted to run his hands alongside those beautifully stained tattoos and let the both of them break into each other like the pair of damaged individuals they were.

But he couldn't. He was royalty. And she would rather spit in his face than look in his eyes and kiss the dust between his toes. Because thus race both drove them to race their potential. And it was like an unspoken bargain between them that they had to do their best, not _try_, do their best and one of them had to win. Definitely.

Or he could obey his mother, ignore this not-quite-beautiful-but-still-stunning human girl that called him 'friend' and let the Crogs win.

But somehow Aikka didn't want the first person who truly believed in him to walk off in disgust, tattoos winking goodbye in the sunlight. Because life with Molly was just that: life. And he choose to cling onto that as long as possible before the sword of the Crogs fell upon his head.

* * *

I am living, I am breathing. I am racing. I am fast. And her fire is in my veins. 

There's a thrill and a hum and it connects to my head with a sudden uncomfortable jolt. And there's a dizzying rush of electricity in my mouth and this…this is what it's like to defy life. And death. And that almost intangoiable line between.

I'm disobeying everything my mother drilled into my head. I'm ignoring the distant bluer of the military bell. and I'm praying that my grandfather felt this long before the tags fell into my hands. Before I had the chance to dirty them.

She did this to me. She burnt me. Bad. She made me forget what it was like to be hugged by the only woman I have ever touched (_mum_) and see how unprefectly the shape of a smaller girl fits by my side when I am almost close enough for her not to scratch me. And it smells _good_.

The soldier is being bred out of me. He bleeds and crumbles away from this onslaught of an unreadable, emotional, alien-loving girl. Her scream toils for me, a charmed deathbed standing by. Her voice pulls me into danger, to her aid. Again, again, again.

And one day, she screams a little louder than before (_for Aikka_). And she cries a little more (_for her weeping father_). And she smiles just a little more genuinely than any teenage human before or after this little universe of Oban has experienced (_for herself_). But the light of the avatar snaps up and seals with a-

JORDAN!

-snap. The end of our world. Her voice rings out and like a lamb, I follow.

JORDAN!

My name dances on her tounage. She wails a little higher than before, louder, louder, louder, like the keening flame that she is, louder, almost loud enough to wake the-

JORDAN!

-dead.

_I love you Molly._

Almost. The light snaps shut like the lid of a coffin.

JORDAN! _I'm sorry. It wasn't supposed to be you. You're like gentle starlight. Mellow. One more thing to hurt. I'm the fire that's supposed to burn out_JORDAN!

But I'm not dead. Except to the planet these dog-tags were carved out of.

_I was supposed to burn..._

And I stopped her destiny. I quit before I had to perceive her destruction.

_I have always destroyed…_

And I will now create.

_What is there left to destroy?_

Eva. That's the only thing Molly can hurt now.

_Jordan…what is there left to destroy? I only know how to hurt…_

She's crying. And that's the only sound loud enough to kill me.


End file.
